Other Planes From There

Demetrius Oliver (AAMP) and Saya Woolfalk (PAFA) will consider the relationship between art and knowledge, and the role of the cosmos in each of their artworks created for Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America. The title is inspired by the Sun Ra album of the name. Tiffany E. Barber, scholar, curator and writer, will moderate the conversation that will question how (or if) art can be a vehicle for democracy and freedom.

Other Planes Of There is part of the Rising Sun Artists & Curators Series presented by the African American Museum in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The series was created, in part, to extract the deeper and more nuanced themes found across the commissioned works and artists ethos and inspiration. It gives the audience an opportunity to learn from and interact with the creative minds behind the arresting and visceral work and is meant to act as a greater catalyst for larger conversation around democracy, freedom of expression, place, personhood, community, and citizenship.

Dr. Tiffany E. Barber is a prize-winning, internationally-recognized scholar, curator, and critic whose writing and expert commentary appears in top-tier academic journals, popular media outlets, and award-winning documentaries. Her work spans abstraction, dance, fashion, feminism, film, and the ethics of representation, focusing on artists of the Black diaspora working in the United States and the broader Atlantic world. She has completed fellowships at ArtTable, the Delaware Art Museum, the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, and the Getty Research Institute. Dr. Barber is the recipient of the Smithsonian’s 2022 National Portrait Gallery Director’s Essay Prize.  Before joining the Department of Art History at UCLA, she was Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Art History at the University of Delaware. She is also an alumna of the School of Criticism and Theory (’14) at Cornell University.

Tickets: $0 - $10. 

Registrants for this event are invited to experience PAFA’s installation of Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America before the panel, from 5:00 – 5:50 pm.